The King of Swords (max mingus) (28 page)

'I know I ain't ever gonna make much of a difference in the grand scheme of things. I'm past that rookie idealism. Crime goes up, not down. Guns get bigger, more powerful, hold more bullets, kill more people. But in the end, if I can bring a little peace of mind to some dead person's wife or husband, if their kids can grow up knowing that the scumbag who killed their mommy or daddy's dead or in jail for life, then it's worth it. And that's what keeps me goin', no matter how jaded I sometimes get. That's what keeps me goin' every second of every day.'

She didn't say anything. She just moved a little closer to him and leant her head on his shoulder and they stood there together in silence while he finished his cigarette.

They went back inside and carried on talking. Personal stuff, trivial stuff. They joked and laughed a lot. With Sandra, Max felt happier and more relaxed and comfortable than he'd been since he could remember.

And then she asked him what had been bugging him over lunch.

He thought about it for a second, how he'd never brought his job into his private life, how he'd refused to talk about any of it with any of the women he'd been involved with. He'd kept it to himself and in the end it was all they'd left him with-the stuff that never got mentioned. He decided then that more than anything, he wanted Sandra in his life and he wanted her to stay.

'Yesterday me and Joe got a call about a multiple homicide in Overtown. Whole family had been shot. Six bodies. But there was this young couple, boyfriend and girlfriend. They were holding hands. And from the way they were, I could see the girl had got shot first and the guy had lain down right next to her and taken hold of her hand. And that's how he died.'

'He couldn't live without her,' Sandra said.

'That's what I thought too. He musta really loved her. Literally the love of his life. And I also thought-' but he stopped talking, realizing how sick the words he was about to say might sound.

'What?'

'You don't wanna know'.

'Max,' Sandra took his hand, 'we're both adults and we both know what's happening here. If we're gonna have any kind of relationship it's got to be about sharing and honesty and openness. You'll tell me about your day, I'll tell you about mine. I don't want you keeping anything from me.'

'My part's gonna be difficult, Sandra.'

'Why?'

'There's things about me you'd be best off not knowing.'

'Past stuff?'

'Yeah.' Max nodded.

'You a dirty cop?'

'I don't think I am. But I've gone through bad to get to good. Sometimes you have to in this job. Sometimes you got no choice. Well, you do. You can walk away. But I ain't the kind that walks away.'

'I figured that,' she said.

'OK.' He took a deep breath, as though he was getting ready for a high dive into a bottomless pool. 'I'll tell you what I thought when I saw that couple. I thought that coulda been you and me down there. That I woulda done the same as the guy.'

'That's a sweet thought,' she said.

'That's a sick thought,' he corrected her.

'It's a bit gothic, I agree.' She smiled. 'And you barely know me.'

'Cop's instinct,' he said.

'I thought that just worked on bad guys.'

'When I'm off-duty it works the other way.'

She laughed and put her arms around him. They hugged and then they kissed.

'You taste like an ashtray.'

'Who told you to lick 'em?'

She burst out laughing. Her laughter filled the room and drowned out the music. Her laughter made him laugh too.

When they'd recovered she leant her head against his shoulder and took his hand. They stayed there like that, staring into space together. The music stopped without them noticing.

He realized she'd dozed off. He listened to her breathing in his ear, felt her gently rise and fall against his arm. He smelled her hair and his nose filled with faint traces of perfume and coconut.

At around 4 a.m. he fell asleep himself.

W
hen he woke up two hours later he heard the shower going. After she was done she made them both breakfast of tostada and cafe con leche, which they ate at the living-room table. Max imagined every day being like this with her.

An hour later they walked back to where they'd parked their cars on South West 8th. They'd exchanged numbers. Max wanted to see her again that same night, but he knew he couldn't because he'd lost time on the Moyez case.

Before they parted she kissed him on the lips. Like the first time, he watched her pull away before getting into his car. And like the first time, he had the same stupid smile on his face.

He had an hour or two before he was due to punch in. He thought of going over to the garage, but he needed a shower and a change of clothes and he wanted to stay in this special moment and savour it for a while longer.

As he headed down Calle Ocho he turned on the radio and got the news. A cop had been killed in Overtown the day before. Police were looking for a tall, light-skinned black man in a white Crown Victoria.

Back at his apartment, Max had just finished getting dressed when the phone rang. It was Raquel.

'That sample you gave me yesterday. We located our mystery bean.'

'Shoot,' Max said, ri?ing through his notepad for a clean page.

'It's a calabar bean.' She spelled it for him. 'Two uses: one good, one bad. It produces an alkaloid called physostigmine, which is used to treat glaucoma and is found in over-the-counter eyedrops.

'The bean on its own is highly toxic. It was used to expose those suspected of witchcraft, when it was commonly known as the Ordeal Bean. The person under suspicion would be forced to eat half a bean. If the person vomited, he or she was deemed to be innocent because their bodies had rejected it. If the person died then they were guilty. Most people died.

'The bean depresses the nervous system and causes muscular weakness. It slows the pulse to a crawl but increases blood pressure too.'

'How long does a person live after they've swallowed one?' Max asked.

'One, two hours at the most, depending on the person and the dose.'

Max thought about this for a moment. Lacour and Assad had killed people in different places and at different times.

'Is there an antidote?' Max asked.

'I was getting to that,' Raquel said. 'We found traces of atropine in the shooter's bladder. Atropine's an alkaloid derived from belladonna-deadly nightshade. It counteracts the effects of physostigmine. But, as it was in the bladder, I think he got the antidote some time before he stepped into that courtroom.'

'How long before?'

'Atropine takes a while for the body to completely eliminate. Again, it depends on the person. Three to six weeks.'

Max understood what had happened. After his trial run of murders in Overtown, Assad had been given atropine to keep him alive for the main event.

'I'll tell you this,' Raquel said. 'The levels of physostigmine in the shooter's liver were so high, he was basically a dead man walking before a bullet ever hit him.'

'
Solomon? That all you got?' Trish Estevez asked Joe.

'Yeah. That's all I got. Sorry.'

'Don't apologize to me. You're the one who's gonna have to do the work.'

Trish was the Miami PD's computer database manager. She'd started out in dispatch in 1967 and then taken computer classes in the evening and gone on to become an expert in the things before they were introduced into the department in 1971, when next to no one knew how to use them. Now she had two people working for her, who she'd trained from scratch. They were transferring all the paper records to floppy disc, an arduous process which would have been easier with more manpower and machines, but the budget was minimal. The dot-matrix printer made up the heart of the computer room. It was about as long and as wide as an upright piano, and stood on two tables which had been pushed together to support it. Trish sat at a desk at the end of the room, watching over her people working at their Compaq machines, each at a desk on either side of the room, near the door, their backs to each other; their fingers hitting the keyboards the only sound. The machines they were working on-VDUs which looked like small portable black and white TVs-couldn't help but remind Joe of something archaic, like the set in his parents' house he and his brothers used to put red or blue strips of plastic over to pretend it was colour, or the small set he'd had in the first apartment he'd lived in when he'd left home.

'Gonna be a big old list. First name, family name, middle name, street name, nick name.' Trish's parents had immigrated from Ireland to Boston when she was seven, and a broad brogue still held fast to her accent.

'I'll start off with first names.'

'Wise choice,' she said and spun her chair to face the grey wall-to-wall cabinet behind her, where rows of 51/4 and 31/2 inch floppy discs were lined up in alphabetical order. The former were housed in cardboard sleeves which made Joe think of the old 10-inch 78s his granddad used to play.

She took out seven of the bigger discs and fed them into the computer on her desk. The machine purred and made an accelerated clicking sound before a menu came up on the screen. She hit a few keys.

'Seven hundred and fifty-three entries under first name Solomon,' she said.

'How up to date are they?'

'Last entry was in November.'

'That'll do,' said Joe.

'Come back around four for the paper.'

'Thanks.'

'You guys could make my life a lot easier if you knew how to use one of these.'

'Then you'd be out of work,' Joe said.

'That's why man invented machines.' Trish smiled.

In the library, Max went through a botany book until he found what he was looking for: Calabar bean-seed of Physostigma venenosum, a climbing leguminous plant found in West Africa. The seed is half an inch in diameter and of a dark brown colour.

The short piece went on to describe the bean's toxic and medicinal properties, as well as its use in witchcraft.

He turned the page and found a colour photograph of the bean. He recognized it from somewhere. The next photograph down was of the plant it grew from. Green leaves and deep pink-coloured flowers.

Green, he thought. A green suit, matching green eyes.

He looked at the bean again.

And it came back to him: the pimp he'd beaten up outside Al amp; Shirley's diner on 5th Street, the stuff he'd confiscated and put in his Mustang.

'Shit! '

He found the silver cigar tube at the back of the glove compartment. He opened it and shook out the contents into his hand. Five calabar beans.

W
hen Joe took off Pip Frino's blindfold and he saw he wasn't in a police station like he expected to be, but in a room with boarded windows, faded, damp-stained yellow wallpaper and ripped flowery lino on the floor, he looked worried.

'What is this place? Where am I?'

'Purgatory,' Max said, 'limboland.'

Max and Joe were sitting opposite him at a wooden table with a one kilo bag of 93 per cent pure Medellin cartel cocaine in between them.

'What am I doin' here?' Frino spoke in a rough, growly voice and a heavy Australian accent which gave it gravitas. He was short and thickset, with medium-length lank blond hair and a full beard. The whiteness of his teeth was accentuated by the golden tan of someone who worked outdoors.

They were in an MTF safehouse in Opa Locka. It was early Tuesday morning. Dawn was breaking outside; the birdsong just about filtering through the walls. Frino and his whole crew had been arrested on the Miami River, close to Biscayne Bay, right in the middle of a drop-off in a joint operation between MTF and the Coastguard. The Coastguard got to keep 75 per cent of the drugs, the boats, the crew and all the credit in exchange for handing Frino over to MTF. It had been a smooth operation. No shots fired; a simple swarm and seize.

Max and Joe had gone to Frino's harbour-front penthouse, where they'd found a loaded silver Beretta 92 in a bedside cabinet and a safe with $200,000 cash and Swiss, Italian, German, British, Australian and New Zealand passports under various names.

Max was looking through the passports without saying a word. Joe sat back in his chair with his arms crossed, angrily eyeballing Frino.

'These yours?' Max held up a few of the passports.

'Yes.'

'That's five to ten years right there. You got a licence for the gun?' Max asked. 'No.'

'Another five to ten. And this morning's bust puts you away for life everlasting. You're thirty-eight. You ever been to jail?'

Frino shook his head.

'You'll go to a maximum security facility. That's hell on earth. Everyone'll try and kill you or fuck you or both. Guy like you won't get old in there,' Max said. Frino eyeballed him back. No emotion. 'You got anything to say?'

'Lawyer,' Frino answered.

'You're not under arrest,' Max said, 'we haven't charged you.'

'Otherwise I'd be in a police station instead of this crab shack,' Frino said.

'You catch on quick,' Joe said. 'Pip a girl's name?'

'Who are you people?'

'Who we are is of no importance to you right now. What we can do to you is,' Max said.

'Lawyer! ' Frino shouted.

'You're not under arrest,' Max repeated.

'Then this is kidnapping.'

'Call it what you want, I don't give a shit,' Max said. 'You run drugs in go-fast boats out of the Bahamas into here. Who for?'

'I freelance. I get green for running white. Whoever's payin'.'

'Who was payin' this time?'

'What's this about?' Frino asked.

'We'll come to that,' Max said. 'Answer my question.'

'Is this about cuttin' some kind of deal?'

'Answer my man's question,' Joe said.

'It was a guy called Benito Casares. Colombian. He's a middle-man for a cartel. One of many. I never met the main guys; you never do.'

'Who's the main guy and what's the cartel?'

'Medellin cartel. That's Medellin in Colombia. Main guy-well, there's two, one in Colombia, one in the Bahamas. Pablo Escobar in Colombia, Carlos Lehder in the Bahamas. Norman's Cay. Virtually fuckin' runs the place. But I guess you know that already?'

Max just about stopped himself from looking at Joe.

'So you never met Lehder?'

'No.'

'Where d'you meet Casares?'

'Here. In Miami. Where we always meet.'

'How was that set up?'

'There's a carwash in Little Havana. I'd go there, tell the guys I want to talk to their boss and leave a number. Casares'd call and fix up a meet. I'd turn up.'

'How many times you worked for him?' Max asked.

'Seven in the last two years.'

'So he trusts you?'

'I guess.'

'OK,' Max said. 'Here's the deal. And, so as you know from the off, it's non-negotiable. Our way or jail.'

'I figured that. What do I get out of it?'

'You don't go to jail and you leave the country. And don't come back. Ever,' Max said.

'What do I have to do?'

'I'm gonna tell you something that happened and you're gonna repeat it into a tape recorder downtown with your lawyer present. That will become a statement. You will then have to repeat the statement in court,' Max said. 'You try to fuck us at any stage between now and for ever, and you will reap almighty hell. You understand?'

'In every language,' Frino said and smiled sardonically, showing a set of gleaming white teeth, perfect in every way but for two overlong, vampiric incisors.

'Do we have a deal?'

'What do you want me to say?'

Max told him: Frino was paid by Benito Casares to transport the Moyez shooter from Norman's Cay, and that once they got to Miami, he handed him over to Octavio Grossfeld.

'So I implicate myself in that courtroom shooting?' Frino smiled. 'What kind of fuckin' cops are you?'

Neither Max nor Joe said anything to that. They couldn't. They had no replies, no comebacks, just a deep sense of shame. Frino seemed to pick up on this and sat back in his chair with his arms crossed and his legs splayed, smug and haughty, enjoying himself.

'You guys work on the Kennedy assassination too?' Frino asked.

'Will you do it?' Max responded.

'Sure. Anything to help you boys out, seein' as we're virtually on the same team.'

Jed Powers was sitting in the kitchen with Valdeon, Harris and Brennan, drinking take-out coffee.

'Well?' he asked Max when he came in.

'When he gives his statement he'll say that he ferried in the Moyez shooter from Norman's Cay,' Max said. 'But there's a little more: his real life middle-man happens to work for Carlos Lehder. All Frino has to do is make a call and he'll deliver the guy to us.'

Jed Powers stood up and clapped. The other three followed suit.

'Great police work!' Powers shouted and spun his fist in the air.

Max wanted to be sick.